American thinker Ben Franklin once said that "any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." In the West, this line has been used by civil libertarians and citizens of all political stripes to criticize the vast security apparatus -- increased border surveillance, airport scanners, phone tapping schemes, cameras deployed in our public spaces, etc. But the sentiment also comes up when you look at what the enemies of liberty are doing in the far less secure "battlefronts" of the developing world.
One such battlefront was the Muna Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia. On Tuesday, Islamist militants attacked there, killing more than 30 people, including six members of parliament. They moved room to room in a systematic extermination operation. And when they ran out of bullets, they blew themselves up. The Somali insurgent group al-Shabab claimed responsibility.
Many Westerners, particularly those ensconsced in ivory towers or working for left-wing media outlets don't quite know what to make of these kinds of atrocities. It doesn't fit the paradigm. These gunmen...More >>
Any reasonable understanding of the Israeli lobby necessarily includes an investigation of movements like Israli Apartheid Week (IAW). Otherwise, it’s sort of like trying to listen to the sound of one hand clapping.
Let’s look at one of the loudest groups within the umbrella movement that criticizes the Israel Lobby (and of course, Israel itself).
IAW advocates give Palestinian actions a carte blanche. In doing so, they help justify terrorism, incitement to hatred and Islamist repression of civil rights. In short, they help perpetuate violence.
The motive is to brand Israel as a racist enterprise deserving of political and possibly physical destruction.
When one boils it down to the bare essentials: the Lobby is interested in presenting Israel in a positive light, of course. It recognizes that the honest and effective means of doing this is not by presenting Palestinians as evil, but to show the honest views of all parties with a vested interest in the region.
The anti-Israel gang of activists (I’d call them pro-Palestinian, but what have they ever done for the Palestinians they claim to represent?) strive to show Israel, as a place of intolerance, racism and illegitimacy. And I’ll give this to them: their propaganda...More >>
American thinker Ben Franklin once said that "any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." In the West, this line has been used by civil libertarians and citizens of all political stripes to criticize the vast security apparatus -- increased border surveillance, airport scanners, phone tapping schemes, cameras deployed in our public spaces, etc. But the sentiment also comes up when you look at what the enemies of liberty are doing in the far less secure "battlefronts" of the developing world.
