Thanks to Robert Spencer's internet site Jihad Watch for bringing our attention to a largely unreported story. In August, in Houston, twenty-three year old Saudi Arabian national Mohammed Ali Aleyed virtually decapitated his Jewish friend Ariel Sellouk. According to Ariel's father, two years ago Aleyed underwent a "religious experience," becoming a devout Muslim, and cut off all ties with Ariel. On the day of the slaying, Aleyed suddenly called Ariel, lured him to his apartment, killed him, and then went to a local mosque. Alayed's roommate told police there was no argument before the slaying.
The police say they cannot find a motive but are sure it had nothing to do with religion; similarly the prosecutor said there was no clear motive. The Houston Chronicle, however, does not have trouble connecting the dots. Neither did Aleyed's lawyer, who had him cop a guilty plea with a sentence of 60 years. Attorneys in the area apparently were agreed that jurors might have been hard on Aleyed because the murder "raised the specter of Islamic extremism and stereotypes surrounding terrorists." Stereotypes?
As Spencer observes, "This is a craven example of the astounding state of denial that dominates the public discourse today about radical Islam. Did prosecutors investigate the possibility that in the course of his religious reawakening Aleyed may have come across the hadith collection Mishkat Al-Messabih, which states 'When judgment day arrives, Allah will give every Muslim a Jew or Christian to kill so that the Muslim will not enter into hell fire' (vol. 2, no. 5552)? Did they take note of the fact that a recent Muslim murderer of a Jew in France cried after the deed, 'I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven'?"
Thanks to the University of London's Prof. Efraim Karsh for an especially fine addition to the Shimon Says collection. In his "The Oslo War: A Tale of Self-Delusion," Karsh points out that Israel's negotiating team had no goals, no road map, not even any serious discussion of the direction of the entire process, only the ruminations of Shimon Peres: "I think what is really important for a peace process is the creation of a partner, more than a plan. Because plans don't create partners but if you have a partner then you negotiate a plan." And what, says Karsh, if the partner failed to carry out the role ascribed to him? In the immortal words of Shimon, "We close our eyes. We don't criticize because, for peace, we must produce a partner."
1984 is of course the title of Orwell's classic novel. It is also the year of some prophetic comments by French "nouveau philosophe" Andre Glucksmann, reported in a New York Times Magazine article (April 29, 1984) by John Vinocur, then chief of the paper's Paris bureau. Vinocur reports Glucksmann's contention that anti-Americanism in Europe had the contours of classic anti-Semitism. The reproaches were the same, said Glucksmann. "You can add an additional crime now. In much of the anti-nuclear logic, the armed citizen becomes a criminal. The poor guy who wants to defend himself is no good. The American, the Jew in Israel, he will fight. He's 'a dangerous man.'" Vinocur notes that Glucksmann feels "the Americans represent, as the Jew once did, a lack of order, of uncertainty, an unseemly ability to thrive within the insecurities of democracy."
According to Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim, Prime Minister Sharon made a pledge to the United States to help establish a Palestinian state in 2004 regardless of whether the Palestinian Authority eliminated or even sought to curb terrorism. According to Boim, the U.S. demanded that Israel withdraw from much of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip during 2004 to permit establishment of a Palestinian state with interim borders. Asserts Boim: "The Americans said clearly that within the first phase of the Road Map, the sides were to fulfill their commitments in parallel, with our obligations not dependent on whether the PA fulfilled its obligations."
As for the PA, Israeli intelligence chief Gen. Zeevi Farkash recently reported that Abu Ala (Ahmed Qureia), the current prime minister, has "given up and is not functioning," that "Arafat is everything in the PA" and continues "to fund the Al-Aksa brigades." If the Bush administration has indeed insisted on a PA state, regardless of what the PA does, the President's vaunted war on terror is a sham. If Sharon agreed to such a reading of the road map, he is unfit to lead. And if Sharon is making it all up, to blame U.S. pressures for his policy of unilateral surrender, he should be forced to resign.
Outpost - 2 - February 2004